estimated total cost of $18.4 billion.

The whole F-35 program is looking to be north of $1 Trillion over the plane's useful lifetime. And that's if we don't trash a few in combat and decide to buy a few more.

$18 billion is around 2% of the annual military budget. Heck, we could probably find that lying around in the Pentagon's couch cushions. Of course, they may need that money to pay for deportation flights at 10 times the cost of chartered commercial flights. Then again, if we get 'em all deported, we won't need the wall any more.

A billion here and a billion there, and soon you're talking about real money. -Senator Dirkson, an awful long time ago. A billion just doesn't buy you as much these days.

--Peter

PS - Yes, I should multiply that 18 billion by 4 since it was for only a quarter of the total border. Feel free to do that. Then make it 2% of the military budget for each of the 4 painfully long years of the Trump administration. (Unless a miracle happens, people come to their senses in the mid-terms and he makes more impeachment history as the only President to successfully be impeached. But I suspect that is an extremely low probability event.)